Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all. Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? Ah ! fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He whom thou seekest ! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.
* F. B. Macnutt, The Inevitable Christ, 8.
Zz6 THE SAVIOUR'S EASTER GREETING
3. But while Christ forces Himself thus upon our attention He never compels our submission. It is always a matter of choice and will with us as to the reception He receives when He appears. For when once He has secured our ear and engaged our thought He subjects Himself to our will. The crowning pathos and tragedy of life is to close the door more closely when we have been made aware of His Presence. Its crowning glory is to open it wide that the King of Glory may come in.
^ A Sunday spent at Cambridge in order to preach before the University came to Creighton as a welcome break. He chose as the subject of his sermon " Liberty." Some years before at break- fast at Lambeth Palace, he had propounded the question what was the most important object of pursuit, and had maintained amidst the friendly and animated contradiction which never failed in that circle, that liberty was the most precious possession of man. This conviction only deepened as the " years passed. But he felt also increasingly the tremendous responsibility of liberty, and said that, instead of snatching at it as a prize, it would be more true to speak of the burden of liberty. In this sermon at Cambridge he said : " If we try to grasp the meaning of progress as it is shown in the history of the past, it is to be found only in the growing recognition of the dignity of man, which is another form of expressing human freedom, and is the ground of its calm." ^
II.
The Message of Peace.
"Peace be unto you."
This invocation of peace, at beginning or ending of intercourse, was already ancient. In our Lord's day it had become just as much part of the social habits of the people as the custom of saying "Good-morning" is among ourselves. All the Semitic peoples, the Syrians, the Arabians, and, as we know from the Talmud, the Jews of the Dispersion, used it as a matter of course. In earlier days, no doubt, men had invoked peace from heaven with the utmost deliberation and seriousness. In the age of the kings and prophets the phrase had still a living meaning: the speaker actually prayed for the blessing of peace on the person 1 Life and Letters of Mandcll Creighton, ii. 320.
ST. JOHN XX. 19, 20 337
whom he addressed. It is a gradual process by which the real fresh language of primitive times is stiffened into the unmeaning forms of the society of a later age ; but as far as this expression is concerned, the process was already complete in our Lord's day. And yet He did not scruple to avail Himself of the conventional phrase.
But this was not merely the familiar greeting of friend to friend — though it was that — in that strange moment when two worlds met. Nor was it merely a kindly word — though it was that, too — to pacify their terror, as this apparition from another world stood silently and suddenly before them. It was a word of larger, more majestic scope. Spoken to men who had met in fear, and who looked forward to troubled days, it had a wonderful power to soothe, coming from the lips of the Lord, fresh from His victory over death. " The disciples, therefore, were glad when they saw the Lord," glad with a great gladness which we cannot know till we have fathomed the depths of their sorrow and despair as they saw Jesus taken from His cross and laid in Joseph's tomb. Jesus is strangely earnest about this peace. Those worn, hunted men need it; and He will not leave them till He has made them sure of it. "Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you." Ae
^ A great soul can redeem his words frotr. triviality. He takes the most conventional expressions, the small change of ordinary courtesy, which on the lips of other men mean nothing, and in his mouth they have such heart and substance that you go on cheered and bettered by his greeting. " Peace " is one of the anointed words which hold rank in human speech by native dignity, but in Palestine it had been degraded to the level of a customary civility, with which the most indifferent acquaintances met and parted. And Jesus takes the word, humbled and im- poverished, and makes such use of it that it is no longer trivial but has the force of a command for their hearts.^
•[I Professor Johnston Ross relates that he once visited a furniture-dealer's shop in West London. The man was a Jew, and, noticing that his visitor wore clerical dress, he began to talk on religious matters. After an interesting conversation the Professor mounted his bicycle, saying, " Good-bye," when the dealer called out in Hebrew, " Peace be unto you " — using the
^ W. M. Macgregor, Jesus Christ the Son of God, 166. ST. JOHN (2) — 22
^3^ THE SAVIOUR'S EASTER GREETING